A Tale of Two Airports

With apologies to Charles Dickens, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

Ted Stevens International

On Friday when we went to pick up the rental car at 5:15 pm the car rental center was like a ghost town - no waiting in line.  So imagine our surprise when we arrived at 4 pm when the place was so packed that there we lines almost out the door to the entrance to the train station.  It became clear that at least two cruise ships had returned and all those passengers had been deposited at ANC at the same time.

Fish boxes everywhere

The problem was even worse in the check in area, because not only the cruise passengers, but all sorts of people finishing up their week-long fishing trips on the Kenai were overwhelming the bag drop area.  Fish boxes were everywhere, and the line to drop bags was all the way from the AK Air area back across the lobby almost to the security checkin point.  It took almost an hour to get through check-in (and we were in one of the shorter lines).  Thankfully we were 4 hours ahead of our flight.

rack for cell phone or Kindle

The flight was long, and the seats were VERY uncomfortable.  We did have the new seats, though, and they had the phone rack and cup holder.  Turbulence over the Rockies, and several other places, made for a long night... you'd just be drifting off and they would ring the bell to make the announcement that they were turning the seat belt sign back on.

Boston -- Logan Airport

lots of grass, no bunnies for entertainment

We arrived early, only to come to a halt out on the runway taxiway.  The pilot announced that we had to wait for a plane to clear our gate.  Then he announced that that plane was having mechanical difficulties, and we were going to shut down the engines at wait.  And we waited, and waited, and waited.  An hour and 30 minutes later they fired up the engines, and moved towards the terminal, only to get into a holding pattern while 8 aircraft had to clear before we could get to our gate.  

If we had been on time, we would have ben able to get our rental car promptly, but all the delays put us getting to the rental car area with at least three bus loads of people.  There had to be at least 50 people in line, and only 2 agents on the counter.  By 11 am they finally had 5 agents and we cleared the counter by 11:30, only to get to our assigned car space to discover the wrong car was in there.  (The guy in the garage says that summer travel is way up and their system is not prepared.  DUH!!!) 

The guys in the garage sorted it out, but as we drove out I began to wonder whether the transponder for the toll roads that I had paid for was on this car.  We went down the toll road anyway.  And finally got to our destination - after discovering that a moulding on the car was flapping in the breeze.

Matanuska Glacier - I'd never seen it from the air!

Sunset, somwhere over Canada